Just How Safe Is BASE Jumping From the World Trade Center?

The three men who parachuted off the top of 1 World Trade Center say no one tried to stop them, which means just about anyone can stroll to the roof of tallest building in the U.S. in the middle of the night and jump off — without much risk of getting caught.

James Brady, Andrew Rossig and Marko Markovich turned themselves in to police on Monday, roughly six months after the trio jumped from the roof of 1 World Trade Center, also known as the Freedom Tower, while another man, Kyle Hartwell, acted as a spotter on the ground. Their lawyers told Mashable that the men climb through a tarp-covered hole in the building's fence. They then walked through the open entrance to the building, which is still a construction site.

The lawyers say the men had no run-ins with security and the building has no working cameras that could have caught them. "I can't believe that they just had no security on this thing," legal representative Timothy Parlatore said.

The trio has been charged with misdemeanor reckless endangerment, burglary and jumping from a structure, which is illegal in New York City.

Rossig has been arrested twice in the past for similar parachuting stunts, known as BASE jumping — most recently in 2012, when he didn't quite get the chance to jump off a 33-story building in the Bronx.

The video above shows one jumper landing on an almost-deserted street early in the morning in front of the Goldman Sachs building near the Freedom Tower. Though it's unclear how police eventually identified the men, their stunt was captured by cameras on other buildings, which is likely what launched the investigation. From there, Parlatore doesn't think the investigators' job was too difficult.

"The BASE jumping community is fairly small to begin with," he said. "I'm sure they started asking questions; maybe somebody said something to them, gave them a tip."

The arrests mark the second time in one week that trespassers have highlighted 1 World Trade Center's lack of security cameras. On March 20, 16-year-old Justin Casquejo walked through a hole in the fence, scaled some scaffolding up to the sixth floor, took the elevator to the 88th floor, and climbed up the stairs to the roof.

"The Port Authority joins the [New York Police Department] in condemning this lawless and selfish act that clearly endangered the public," the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the building, said in a statement about the jumpers.

BASE is an acronym for things people can jump off (building, antennae, span, Earth). BASE jumpers most commonly jump off cliffs, free-fall for a short period and release their parachute. It's like skydiving, but considered more dangerous because the jumping-off point becomes an obstacle that can kill them.

Studies show BASE jumping is around five to eight times more deadly than jumping from a plane, which is one reason why it's illegal in state parks. It's also illegal in many cities in a roundabout way, since jumping from tall buildings tends to require trespassing.

"They were being smart to do it when there was less spectators, there was less people who could interfere with a safe jump," said Todd Shoebotham, president of Apex BASE, which makes BASE jumping equipment. "If they did it at 8 a.m. or 5 p.m., then I would say, 'come on guys.'"

Shoebotham watched the video of the jump and said it's obvious the group is experienced. Steph Davis, who runs Moab BASE Adventures that organizes BASE jumps, said jumping off a building is no more dangerous than leaping off a cliff.

"The fact is, you are jumping off a cliff or a building," Davis said. "The bottom line is that's never going to be as safe as sitting in your house."

The jumpers understand why the Port Authority is upset, but blame the conflict more on American misconceptions about BASE jumping than anything else. The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the second-tallest building in the world, invited Shoebotham and Apex Base to jump off the buildings every New Year's Eve.

Shoebotham has jumped off buildings at various events throughout Asia, and hopes to one day do something similar in the U.S.

"If [the building owners] would like to show what they have in a very prideful way, one way to do that is to put it on the world stage and take the positive that can come with that," Shoebotham said.

Whether 1 World Trade Center ever hosts a legal BASE jumping event or not, people aren't likely to stop jumping off. The Washington Post counts six people who have done it since 1975, and those are just the ones we know of.

BASE jumping itself has been in practice since 1783, when a man named Louis-Sébastian Lenormand jumped from an observation tower in Montpellier, France, using a parachute — although it didn't gain the acronym BASE until the 1970s.

"Anytime that there's something tall," Davis said, "there's going to be somebody who wants to jump off it."

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